Gordon Peele Scores With Team Logos

Sports Novelties Make P&k Products A Game Competitor

January 21, 1996|By Mark Mandernach. Special to the Tribune.

It's easy to describe Gordon Peele in one word: entrepreneur. The Sleepy Hollow resident owns P&K Products Co. in Elgin, manufacturer of pro and college sports-related novelties. Peele was one of the pioneers in licensed sports products, and he's one of the survivors. There have been ups, and there have been downs, and in the spirit of a true entrepreneur, Peele has loved every minute of it.

"My dream as a kid was to play big league baseball," Peele said. "That didn't work out, but I'll tell you, this business is a lot like pro sports. We have winning streaks and we have losing streaks, good seasons and bad ones. It's been a roller coaster ride over the years. And it's been a lot of fun, too."

P&K offers a wide array of products licensed by the NFL, NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball, the NCAA, the Brickyard 400, the International Hockey League, Gold's Gym and Roller Hockey International, along with golf and fishing products. The product line includes wastebaskets, magnetized playoff and team standings boards, throw rugs, doorknob hampers, pennant clocks, thermometers, desk clocks, snack helmets, OSHA-approved hard hats, helmet lamps, bumper stickers, lap trays and all-purpose tins, all emblazoned with the logos of more than 250 pro and college teams (a percentage of all sales goes to the licensing bodies).

Jack Kiley of LaGrange, owner of Kiley Sales Inc. in Westmont, has distributed P&K Products since 1980. He has his own view on why P&K has managed to survive in a volatile industry.

"Gordon Peele provides great-quality products with very strong graphics," he said. "He has a solid network of distributors. And, most important, he loves the business, the challenge of coming up with new designs and new products. If he didn't truly love it, he never would have survived this long."

P&K's headquarters since 1990 has been a 150,000-square-foot facility just south of the Northwest Tollway near the Randall Road exit. P&K has 80 to 170 employees, depending on the season, and annual sales in the $15 million range. P&K's products are sold through manufacturers' reps to giants such as Wal-Mart and Sears, in addition to neighborhood sporting goods stores.

Dean Running of Crystal Lake, P&K's vice president of sales and marketing, has been with the company for four years. "It's an exciting atmosphere to work in," he said. "You just don't know what the next hot thing's going to be, whether it's a product or a team.

"And working for Gordon has been an education. He has a way of looking at an idea and seeing something nobody else sees. Take our football helmet snack bowl. He worked with the idea and worked with it some more until he came up with something people like. And over the years we've sold more than 150,000 of them."

Peele, 55, was born in Chicago's Wrigleyville neighborhood, a baseball toss from the ballpark where Cub greats Phil Cavarretta and Andy Pafko starred at the time. When Peele was 8, his dad, a tool and die maker, moved the family to Rosemont, and by Peele's senior year in high school the family had relocated to Elgin.

By the time high school was over, reality set in about a baseball career.

"I'm a bit on the short side, and I realized the odds were against me in a big way," Peele said. So he joined the Army in 1958 and learned about electronics. After the Army, Peele went to the now-defunct Chicago Technical College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1965.

One of the part-time jobs Peele had working his way through college was at an electrical instrument company located in the basement of a pizza place in Carpentersville. Part of the operation involved buying and distributing scientific glassware for use in high school and college science classes. That's when he got the idea to go into the glass business with his new partner, Nicholas Andros.

"The first thing we did was name the company the Elgin Scientific Glass Co.," Peele said. "Believe me, it took a long time to think up that name. Then we hired ourselves a glassblower, so we could manufacture our own glassware. We found a guy, Gilbert Armstrong (who eventually became a partner), who worked in the picture tube division at Zenith. We moved the operation to 970 Elizabeth St. in Elgin. Then we realized we were underfunded, so we raised $2,500 to get the company off the ground. Yeah, things were a little simpler back then."

Then, one summer night, Armstrong brought in glass novelties he had created, including ashtrays, swans and cocktail stirrers. "I thought, `Why not expand our business?' " Peele said. "Then we devised a way to stretch pop bottles into funky shapes and sizes. Those were a big hit."

They brought 24 stretched bottles to Chicago's Gold Coast Art Fair in 1967 and sold them all on Saturday for $2.50 each. "So we went back to Elgin that night, stretched 24 more bottles and sold them all back in Chicago on Sunday," Peele said. "It didn't take a genius to see we were on to something."